I haven’t done a solid survey, but I don’t share your impression. I frequently see contra-mainstream comments get 6 or 7 karma; I also upvote them myself when I think they’re well done.
Moderately low quality mainstream comments will stay at 0 to −1 karma while contra-mainstream comments of (apparently) similar quality score solidly negative karma,
Another influence that may be confounding your observations here is that comments with scores below −2 get automatically hidden.When is a commenter most likely to look at buried comments? Quite possibly, when there’s an argument over the validity of a mainstream position going on. This would lead to bad contra-mainstream comments getting looked at and downvoted further even after they’re buried.
moderately high quality mainstream comments achieve good positive karma while similar quality contra-mainstream comments stay at 0 to 2.
as
high quality mainstream comments achieve good positive karma while similar quality contra-mainstream comments stay at 0 to 2.
And, of course, the borderline between high quality and moderately high quality is very subjective. So, our impressions are mostly compatible but they differ enough that I don’t see a problem.
I haven’t done a solid survey, but I don’t share your impression. I frequently see contra-mainstream comments get 6 or 7 karma; I also upvote them myself when I think they’re well done.
Another influence that may be confounding your observations here is that comments with scores below −2 get automatically hidden.When is a commenter most likely to look at buried comments? Quite possibly, when there’s an argument over the validity of a mainstream position going on. This would lead to bad contra-mainstream comments getting looked at and downvoted further even after they’re buried.
You say:
The OP says:
...and yet you frame this as not sharing the OP’s impression, which confuses me, because it sure does sound like your impressions are compatible.
I think I misread this:
as
And, of course, the borderline between high quality and moderately high quality is very subjective. So, our impressions are mostly compatible but they differ enough that I don’t see a problem.